04/11/2009 - Commentary on Sprints 1-3

I'm happy to see the changes to the theme. I was going to comment on the text run over. You guys are really working as a team to make things look good. I'm excited. I've gone through my iPhoto collection to pull out more pictures from the past 10 years related to Lolo Ding's Jeeps and business - I added a link to more pictures on the dmgjeepwilly section of our wiki. I think we'll see how many sprints we can get through and timebox this to 1 or 2 more weeks. One thing I need to mention - I made a mistake in the web url name. If you notice when you search google for Jeep Willy, most times you see "JEEP WILLYS" with an S. This is the proper name. Subsequently, I've secured www.dmgjeepwillys.com and pointed it to the same site. Please make changes to your theme to reflect that. Also, I like the jeep photo rather than the military man. However, Lolo Ding and Lola Mauricia commented that they'd prefer to see an Army vehicle on the front. Have a look through the pictures I send to see if there's something you can use. Typical army jeep has a star on the hood, a shovel or axe on the side. I would also suggest adding a jeep picture as the little icon to the left of URLS (for instance when you go to www.cognitivemetaphors.com - you can see this in the theme configuration - Your shortcut icon, or 'favicon', is displayed in the address bar and bookmarks of most browsers.)A few Sprint suggestions - I want one Sprint focused on the SEO and navigation menus that point to common terms - allow users to create links to their sites, help tag content, put links to our site on theirs - this is an important part of your site. A good exercise is to go to google and type jeep willys or ww2 jeep. It will come up with the list of most frequent search terms. I challenge you to make a site that comes up in the top page for jeep willys restoration. Another good practice is to query Alexa for top ranked sites by hits - http://www.alexa.com/search?q=jeep+willys

I want one Sprint based on content workflow. Our initial push should be to make it easy enough for Marc's mom or Melissa to put up content and stories about their dad. I like the ideas you all had about specifically telling the history of Jeep Willys in the Philippines. This differeniates us from the rest and gets to a major point in our "argument" - the value of the site. Besides trying to attract enthusiasts, we are also trying to build a "Master Jedi - Padawan" structure. As we generate interest, we also want to attract new workers in the Philippines. Lolo Ding only has 1 worker and his health probably won't let him work very many more years. We need to capture his knowledge, passion about jeeps, and build up potential padawan candidates who want to learn from a 'master' ww2 jeep builder.I want one Sprint on adding Google Adsense - a potential initial money maker to the site - even a few dollars in revenue for advertising on the site would be a quantifiable win.Possible things to put on the shelf - EBAY sales once we figure out the shipping process. I'll add these comments to our wiki. I'll continue to comment on your sprints as you build them. I'm also happy you've been using twitter. I have a twitter app on my phone and look forward while I'm working to see you all doing stuff. Really getting my money's worth. Speaking of money - I've transferred money to Marc's mom but think it is not yet all the way into her account because of Holy week. I'll ask Marc's mom to make an payment to you all as soon as the money hits her account. 

FACEBOOK GROUP - "JEEP WILLY'S" has the most members at 189. Should we build up this group or start our own... Possible JEEP WILLYS PHILIPPINES.